Secret Panel

 Looking down the past few posts on here and it seems I've spelled out TMNT in the titles. Total accident, but made me chuckle for a bit. One for the turtles fans.

Anyway back to the main topic, we have a new book for you all typed up for you. It's The Secret Panel one of those that have a condensed version as a revised edition. Which means every other sentence is altered to within an inch of its life. We still have work to do on this edition but the original is already done. Both will be up when they're done.

The plot to this is that the boys have picked up a man calling himself John Mead, who has a strange mansion out of town with concealed locks. A bunch of crooks have settled on using the place as a hideout and when one of their crew gets shot, they kidnap an old friend of Laura Hardy to take care of him.

Depending on the story, these crooks are targeting museums (original) or electrical warehouses (remake) and bypassing all locks and alarms in the building.

Chet is sold a lemon of a boat that was festering away in the Mead mansion boathouse. As a subplot and in the original book there is interest in a mini sub which feels more like it should be in the remakes rather than the original.

Lastly there is a locksmith robbing his victims while installing new locks on their property. The original has a lame premise about rare locks but the remake nails it with some antiquities and Mr. Hardy's list of fingerprints on the case.

All in all the original stands up and the remake, though condensed actually has a few areas where it improves on the original. Chet actually has a girlfriend of sorts in the remake, she's called Helen Osbourne and, in the original is more of a pity date, out of convenience, whereas in the remake, she goes to the cinema and a strange chemist shop / diner for sandwiches along with his sister, Iola and Callie Shaw.

Original and remake can be found here  and here. 

Twatter

 I know the world and his dog has an opinion on this, but, Twitter has been unbearable for ages now.

I get it, as a fellow robot with a thin skin , I know what Elon's doing as a fit of pique and that. I also know that him falling into the soft right / mid ground political side of things is also where  I am.

For those in who have been in a hole for the past few weeks. Elon Musk has bought Twitter for $44 gorillion dollars, and has managed to piss of the verified blue check marks, the far left and a few of my mates who have decided to jump ship to Mastodon. As a final brilliant move, he's reinstated Donald Trump and am prepared when I log in next for an almost unparalleled amount of autistic screeching from the left.

The downside is some of the people I follow who post rare game stuff going away. And the fact the weird left wing types I follow for balance, posting Chicken little style, Twitter is falling, due to him laying off so many, malding leftie types.

That and posting on going to Mastodon daily. I've looked at Mastodon and it's OK for what it is. Never anything else. No poa.st no Gab or Parler, no minds or even good ol Facebook, just Mastodon.

Like one of my mutuals on there say, I'll be there till it burns down.

Malder's Gate

 Love that I can come up with a consecutive bad pun two weeks in a row. For your information mald is a contraction of mad and bald. Hence Malder's gate.

You'll need some info as to what I've been up to as well to get a bunch of godshagging malders after me. I'm on Instagram but rarely post, one of the people I follow is James Lindsay who you may  know from the Sokal hoax amongst other things. Me  I know him from posting cringe on Insta. 

His market seems to be a tide of bible belt bollocks believers. That trannies are proselytizing to your children and turning them gay. That the World Economic Foundation are the axis of evil and worst of all Covid lockdowns.

Where as I have no problem with a few of these things, I know little about the WEF, and its boss Klaus Schwab or globalization to care. But a few of these are about the promotion of god which as an atheist and liberal fence sitter really grind my gears. So I did a comment saying that god didn't exist and got a few godshagging malders saying that he definitely does exist and that a only a fool says that god doesn't exist.

I've a question for you. If you are buying into an afterlife sight unseen on the promise that believing in a guy with no shred of evidence ever existing, will grant you eternal life in a gilded cage just so that, someone else who doesn't believe all that, will suffer for eternity.

Then who's the fool?

Neverwinton Nights

Joke titles aside, I've been playing Neverwinter Nights both the original PC version and the Switch modern remake. 

First impressions on the PC version is that it works on the old laptop running Win 7 and that despite cut scenes not showing (no movie only audio.) It's not bad can't think why there is not a decent remake for Win 10 or at least a facelift / remake patch so it runs without error. 

The plot is rather up to date, seeing as there is a plague ravaging the city of Neverwinter and you've been tasked to hunt down some escaped critters that may have a bearing on a cure and that. 

The city is divided into the criminal run docks, the poor quarter with its whopping undead problem and the prison and noble quarters which I've yet to explore. 

The Switch version which is a modern remake for modern consoles and PC has its own issues, in that its reliance on doing everything by the shoulder buttons and control sticks makes it ten times more fiddly than it already is, And its already fiddly. Seemingly ignoring that the Switch has a touchscreen to deal with matters such as this. Its still a good game, just lesser than it should be.

Talking of Dale Winton (our title reference, yo.) I wonder if Beamdog are going to cover the Icewind Dale games.